Who is Giles Coren?

Food critic Giles Coren (the one on the right of picture)

took a swipe at Australians and their cricketers.

Picture: SBS. Source: Supplied

Apart from being a w#&*er and a first class twit, he's carrying on at Australia like a spoiled brat.

Previously he's been in trouble with his (then) employer, The Times for leaking an abusive email of his to their sub-editors to The Guardian which also found its way into The Telegraph 'cos they had deleted a single word from his review. He then upset the Polish people, drawing an official complaint from the Polish government when he accused them of being Jew burners who denied their role in the holocaust. Then he topped this with this year when he posted on Twitter:

"Next door have bought their 12-year-old son a drum kit. For fuck's sake! Do I kill him then burn it? Or do I fuck him, then kill him then burn it?"

Vivienne Pattison, director of watchdog Mediawatch UK, condemned the remark as "very bad taste".

And followed this up with a Twitter attacking Sophie Dahl's cooking show, "The Delicious Miss Dahl". He posted on Twitter saying:

"This Sophie Dahl show - what a crock of bogus, mendacious s**te. What a sickening sham. The BBC should be f***ing ashamed of itself."

OK!  So England won the Ashes (It's a highly regarded cricket trophy played for between Australia and England) but that does not excuse his shower of spite from someone from a land where bathing is optional!

Clearly, his rage has been building for some time. Thursday it exploded in a riot of cliches and the furious stamping of Coren's tiny feet. In a way, he's done us a favour. His spite-filled rant articulates the repressed resentments of a sizeable minority of Coren's pitiful "united" kingdom. It also inelegantly reminded us all why those nations surrounding Eng-er-land - Scotland, Ireland, Wales and, for that matter, the rest of Europe - despise many of Coren's countrymen so deeply.

In a word, it's "snobbery"!

The only problem for them is England wins so rarely - in any human endeavour - they can hardly ever get a chance to mouth of about it. So when a rare away-from-home Ashes conquest comes along, like a very shy comet, out comes the gloating. It's telling that Coren references such outdated Australian stereotypes. Most of them date back decades, presumably to a time when the English had more reason to gloat. This hasn't been the case for many years. You almost have to go back to when England had an automotive industry.

They're out of practice. To Coren, we're still a nation of misogynists, illiterates and racists. It's a cardboard cut-out view, with outmoded gags that ran out of gas about the time of Sydney's first Mardi Gras.

Coren claims Australia has no culture, barring Neighbours and Home and Away, which, incidentally, Brits devour like so many chip butties. Hey, Giles. The hottest Oscar contender this year stars an Australian teaching your old king how to lose his stutter. Take that, m-m-m-mate.

But let's ignore all the Academy Awards, Booker prizes and Nobel Prizes in the arts Australians have claimed.

A reminder for Giles - no Englishman has won at Wimbledon since before World War II, and that recent British players had oddly Canadian accents. And ignore the fact Australia has whipped England at every Commonwealth Games, the only international multi-sport contest in which they are forced not to rely on their minions to prop them up, since 1978. Dare I suggest that England and Great Britain's success on the track owes more to a slave trade that established black colonies in the Caribbean than anything else? Yes, I dare.

The battle between England and Australia across all competition was best summed up by a banner displayed at London's Upton Park football ground back in February, 2003. Australia was playing England in their national sport, "football". It was called a friendly but that was a misnomer. The Poms wheeled out superstars including David Beckham, Wayne Rooney, Paul Scholes and Rio Ferdinand.

As the teams jogged out, the camera panned to the terraces, where an Australian supporter held up this sign:

"If we win this, you suck at everything."

And guess what? The Aussie Socceroos thrashed them. Even when then-English manager Sven Goran Eriksson brought on a fresh XI in the second half Australia cantered home 3-1.

I know you're just "avin' a laugh' as your countrymen say, in that appealing bastardisation of their own language.But for a food critic like you to talk about cultural superiority is taking it too far. This from a nation that has advanced its national dish all the way from fish and chips to butter chicken. A nation of warm-as-piss beer and cold pies probably made out of mole meat and the homeless. Where people still talk, with a straight face, about "classes" of human beings.

Anyway, enjoy your Ashes, mate. I'm heading for "The Camp" as the next week's weather is predicted to be sunny and about 29C. London can look forward to three days of drizzle, a total of 12 hours of light and a maximum temperature of 3C.

Have a good day.

ps - Incidentally, Giles, where do many of England's cricketers stay when they tour South Africa? With their mum and dad, of course.

An old joke, that one, but it's funny because it's true.